Jun 30 2009 10:06 am,
Glastonbury
Worthy Farm, Pilton, 26/27/28th June
It’s gonna be the first dry Glastonbury ever! And sunny! No rain! No, there’s gonna be some rain! Just a bit! No, wait, it’s absolutely pissing it down! But that’s it, no more rain, just sun! Until Sunday evening, when it rains again! Christ, if the weather forecast for this year’s Glastonbury was anything to go by, the goings on at Worthy Farm were to be defiantly unpredictable. In the end, though, the weekend reflected Mother Nature’s mood; some minor depressing downpours, but mainly blistering shards of red-hot greatness - this year’s Glastonbury may well prove to be one of the best yet.
Friday threatened to start the weekend off with wetness, but by mid-afternoon the sun reared its beautiful, skin-baking head and the festival kicked off in earnest. After a really-quite ridiculous surprise set from N*E*R*D (the fact that they were unannounced guests sort of hollowing out Pharrell Williams’ opening gambit that “200,000 people are here to see N*E*R*D!”, and if he hadn’t confused the fuck out of everyone with that introduction, he did when he said they deserved not to be cut short for coming on late because everyone had paid “between 100 and 200 dollars to see them” - you’re in England, we use pounds you berk), first stop for The Fly is White Lies on the Other Stage. The trio have been hammering home their Summer Of Death missive on some eye-catching ads of late, and, before they’d even played a note, the stage set-up was a statement of grandiose intent; two giant, gleaming W and Ls adorning a theatrical, dark curtain with a runway’s worth of lights shimmering in front of it. Not that anything about White Lies is grounded - their hour-long set is euphorically airborne, overcoming some early technical difficulties (i.e. a bass sound throbbing enough to have everyone running to the nearest Portaloo) to pull out the sort of performance that should see them vying for late evening slots next year. Months on the road have turned the likes of ‘EST’ and ‘Unfinished Business’ into even bigger beasts than their recorded counterparts, and whilst their cover of ‘Dancing In The Dark’ turns The Boss’ classic into a moody, atmospherica stomp, it's closer ‘Death’ that’s the most stunningly massive, their pre-emptive declaration that summer belongs to it now backed up with some resounding evidence. Next up are Friendly Fires, their art-disco deviance the perfect early evening soundtrack to rescue everyone from a sun-induced daze. In a set of glittering, hip-swivelling grooves, ‘Paris’ and ‘Jump In The Pool’ are the highlights. The lowlight? That would be singer Ed’s tight testicle-hugging chinos. Sort it out man, it’s still daylight! Then comes our first foray to the Pyramid Stage to see The Specials. Their set might lack the jaw-dropping impact of those amazing Brixton Academy shows, but it still packs a ska-pop punch, Terry Hall’s lethargic grimacing schtick the beginning and end of How To Be Cool In The Face Of People Kissing Your Arse #101. Serious bit alert!: It’s a sign of what an absolute bunch of fucking morons we all are that The Specials message is as pertinent now as it was 20 years ago. Right, on with ze musik: next on the main stage strides Neil Young, who might pull a significantly lesser crowd than Springsteen the next night, but who is better than him purely for one reason; his setlist choices. Both give Glasto their vein-bursting all, but Neil Young channels that wickedly seducing rage of his into songs people actually know; ‘Hey Hey My My’, ‘Heart Of Gold’, ‘The Needle And The Damage Done’, ‘Cinnamon Girl’, an uber-progged up ‘Down By The River’, and, best of all, a version of ‘Rockin’ In The Free World’ that refuses to end, Young pretending to finish it only to do one more chorus. And then repeating the same trick five more times. More fool us. He’s brilliant, and as he stumbles offstage after completing his fuzz-roar take on The Beatles’ ‘A Day In The Life’ with some plinky-plonking on a xylophone, you can tell he thought so too.
Saturday begins with The Big Pink at the John Peel stage. Well, not strictly - it actually starts with a free breakfast courtesy of Orange in their Chill’n’Charge tent and even though I didn’t have to mention that, I did cos it was nice and the TOILETS WERE CLEAN. Then it’s to John Peel for The Big Pink. Now, some bands just aren’t meant to be seen in the daylight - that’s what it feels like for Bat For Lashes the next day and that’s what it feels like as we watch blearly-eyed Big Pink members stumble onstage and slowly amble through their shoegazey blasts early on Saturday afternoon. It starts thrillingly enough; the slow-motion careen of ‘Too Young To Love’ sounds like My Bloody Valentine in bullet-time, but after that their set meanders aimlessly and we find ourselves staring at the girl singer to try and work out if she actually does anything in the band. Verdict: Don’t think so, no. Then to the Green Fields to get spritual, maaan, by, like, having a sit down, and then the Pyramid Stage beckons us with promises of Spinal Tap’s comedy gold. Disastrously, it’s more comedy aluminium though; their inter-song banter isn’t great, but then when we realise they aren’t joking about Jamie Cullum coming on and playing keyboards with them, which is the funniest thing they say, the Spinal Tap aura of aceness is forever shattered. So, with a mission to charge our phone at the same time as watching a band (two birds, one, err, phone...), it’s to the Orange Chill’n’Charge tent, where The Temper Trap are doing a mid-afternoon set. The atmosphere in there is one of gravity-numbing sterility, but that doesn’t bother TTT one jot as they gallop through a set of some of the most skyscraping, exhilarating songs we’ve heard all year. They sound like the indie groove of Vampire Weekend given some stadium-ised U2 scope and their frontman is a cross between Michael Jackson and Jeff Buckley - we guarantee ‘Sweet Disposition’, ‘Love Lost’ and ‘Science Of Fear’ will all be booming out from a crowd-swelled main stage at some point soon. On a high that we weren’t sure could be bettered, next we trekked across Glasto’s mammoth site for Florence And The Machine at the John Peel tent. The Fly really likes Florence - she’s on the cover of our new issue - but nothing prepares us for the sensory onslaught that is her Glasto performance, where she emerges as truly, mindblowingly, amazing. Her voice is a mesmerising battering ram from the first time she opens her mouth to begin 'Between Two Lungs' and by second song 'Kiss With A Fist’ she’s scaling the stage’s giant lighting rig in her stilettos. Her tour-de-force version of ‘Dog Days Are Over’ meets the most rapturous, enthralling reception of the day. On this evidence, she’s a star already - if it wasn’t for a certain reforming Essex four-piece then Glasto would’ve been all hers. After this came Bruce Springsteen on the Pyramid but he didn’t play any songs we knew and we couldn’t shake off just how incredible Florence And The Machine were. So DANG, Bruce!
Sunday is less about who is playing during the day and more about the fact that, well, Blur are headlining and everyone knows it’s gonna be fucking amazing. And it was. But first: Art Brut, on the Other Stage, are still unrefined, art-rock scuzziness and still not very good, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, at Dance East, sound bafflingly like Iglu & Hartly if they were from Croydon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs lose points for coming on half an hour early and forcing us to miss them, Bat For Lashes, on the Other Stage, keep threatening to do something amazing only to derail it just as it was getting interesting, whilst Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds unleash a seething devilish stomp that has the waiting Blur fans clutching their buttocks in fear. Us included. But Blur. Blur. BLUR! Blur are just incredible. Not like they hadn’t been away, but like they had been away and had worked out exactly why Blur existed in the first place. It seemed entirely natural seeing the four of them together again, seeing Damon Albarn walk up and nuzzle Graham Coxon during Graham-less single ‘Out Of Time’, seeing a fag hanging perilously coolish from Alex James’ mouth as he straddles his monitors, seeing Dave playing drums looking like a bloke who could only be a bloke called Dave who plays drums. Song-wise, it’s perfect, the set leaping through time effortlessly as they flit between big singles and lost album tracks from 'Leisure' (represented by two offerings), ‘Modern Life Is Rubbish’ (five), ‘Parklife’ (eight), ‘The Great Escape’ (two), ‘Blur’ (two), '13' (three) and 'Think Tank' (just the one). It’s heart-wrenchingly beautiful during the singalongs that accompany ‘This Is A Low’, ‘The Universal’ and ‘To The End’, the end of which sees Damon Albarn actually start crying, whilst their canon of Great British Singles are fired out thick, fast and brilliantly - ‘Parklife’ with Phil Daniels, ‘Tender’ with the whole fucking crowd, ‘Girls & Boys’, ‘Country House’, ‘Beetlebum’, ‘Song 2’. The storming, theatrical climax of ‘The Universal’ brings the set, and the weekend, to a close, Blur a fitting end to a festival of relentless, giddy highs - a weekend where the old, the bit-old-but-not-that-old and the new all joined together at Worthy Farm and underlined a brilliant, bright light at the end of 2009’s dark electro-pop tunnel.
Niall Doherty
